There is now a clear and public split between the Miliband brothers over matters of strategy. As Guido reported earlier, David Miliband isn’t taking orders from anyone, and you can sure as hell bet that his piece in this week’sNew Statesman was not approved:

“For some, this will be seductive. Reassurance about our purpose, our relevance, our position, even our morals. Reassurance Labour feels good. But feeling good is not the same as doing good – and it gets in the way when it stops us rethinking our ideas to meet the challenges of the time. And now is a time for restless rethinking, not reassurance. Our attacks on the Tories will not work if we are not clear about what we did. We should say loud and clear where we made mistakes, but we should also insist that the list of gains far outstripped the mistakes. After all, even David Cameron said on coming to office that Britain was better in 2010 than 1997.”

In the call to arms he also says the big state is a “political dead end”. Nobody seems to have told his brother though…